Eat Like an Animal

Here's your nightly math! Just 5 quick minutes of number fun for kids and parents at home. Read a cool fun fact, followed by math riddles at different levels so everyone can jump in. Your kids will love you for it.

Eat Like an Animal

If you’ve ever wondered how a lizard eats — or want to eat like one yourself — you’ll love this video. Two guys try to eat the way animals do. They had to hop, jump, slam their heads on the table, and do other things that we humans wouldn’t call good manners. Of course, the animals all eat different foods. “Carnivores” are meat-eating animals that eat other critters. “Herbivores” eat fruits, veggies and nuts. And “omnivores” eat both sets of food. Depending on their favorite foods, animals have different-shaped jaws, teeth, and paws and claws for holding their food. But none of them eats off a plate very well.

Wee ones: If the guys eat like a cow, alligator, lizard, dinosaur, whale, groundhog, kangaroo, flamingo, and rhino, how many animals do they copy?

Little kids: Who has more legs, 3 flamingos together or a rhino? Bonus: How about the cow, the groundhog, and the lizard? How many legs do they have all together?

Big kids: If the guys had to film each of the 9 animals twice and broke 2 plates in each filming, how many plates did they break? Bonus: If it took 20 minutes to film a set of 3 animals, how long did it take to film all 9 animals?

The sky’s the limit: If you invite flamingos and alligators over for dinner, how many of each animal do you have if they have 24 legs in total and there are 8 more flamingo legs than gator legs?

Answers:Wee ones: 9 animals.

Little kids: The 3 flamingos, since they have 6 vs. 4 for the rhino. Bonus: 12 legs (4 apiece).

Big kids: 36 plates, since they break 4 per animal. Bonus: 60 minutes, since there are 3 sets of 3.

The sky’s the limit: 2 gators and 8 flamingos. If there are 8 more flamingo legs than gator legs, you need 2 numbers 8 apart that add up to 24 (the total leg count). One way to do this: if you didn’t have the 8 extra flamingo legs, you’d have 16 in total (24-8). That gives you 8 gator legs, which would be 2 gators, and 8 flamingo legs, which would be 4. But remember, there are 8 more flamingo legs than that, so you have to add back another 4 flamingos.

About the Author

Laura Bilodeau Overdeck is founder and president of Bedtime Math Foundation. Her goal is to make math as playful for kids as it was for her when she was a child. Her mom had Laura baking while still in diapers, and her dad had her using power tools at a very unsafe age, measuring lengths, widths and angles in the process. Armed with this early love of numbers, Laura went on to get a BA in astrophysics from Princeton University, and an MBA from the Wharton School of Business; she continues to star-gaze today. Laura’s other interests include her three lively children, chocolate, extreme vehicles, and Lego Mindstorms.